Devo Shares Mixed Feelings Toward Its Netflix Documentary & Whether AI Is Part of De-Evolution

For a set that was occasionally dismissed arsenic a gag oregon a fad erstwhile it began confusing mainstream listeners with their idiosyncratic art-punk much than a fractional period ago, Devo is definite having a large 2025.

After playing Radio City Music Hall for SNL 50: The Homecoming Concert successful February, talks began with The B-52s — different conceptual, quirky set who was featured connected the NBC peculiar — for a co-headlining tour. That trek, the Cosmic De-Evolution Tour with opener Lene Lovich, kicked disconnected Wednesday (Sept. 24) nighttime successful Toronto, and follows the Netflix premiere of the caller documentary Devo, helmed by Chris Smith (director of the 1999 cult classic American Movie and the 2023 Netflix doc Wham!). Beyond its 2025 tour, it was precocious announced that Devo volition play some weekends of Coachella successful 2026. “We’re going to beryllium playing to immoderate beauteous large crowds,” muses Devo co-founder Gerald Casale.

In a motion to the rubric of Devo’s subversive, nine-minute creation movie In the Beginning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evolution (1976), I’ll commencement this nonfiction astatine the extremity of my interrogation with Casale, Bob Mothersbaugh and Mark Mothersbaugh, earlier moving connected to the meat-and-spuds Q&A. Prior to signing disconnected the Zoom call, Casale called attraction to a poster of the 1920 fearfulness classical The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari connected my wall. “The communicative goes (the director) got successful occupation with the authorities for it, and helium had to edit the full happening truthful it seemed similar a dream,” helium shares of a movie which depicts authorization arsenic evil, oregon astatine slightest insane. “When it was real, that was unacceptable.”

Devo knows a happening oregon 2 astir delivering uncompromising observations astir quality quality and unsettling predictions for our aboriginal nether the guise of fantasy. Since the mid ‘70s, the Akron, Ohio stone set has explored conformity, capitalism and however it relates to what tin sometimes seems similar humanity’s contention to the bottommost – i.e., “de-evolution,” oregon Devo for abbreviated — alongside a colorful formed of characters portion wearing matching suits, vigor dome hats and integrative hairpieces.

Here, Casale and the Mothersbaugh brothers connection their candid thoughts astir the Netflix documentary, artificial intelligence, FCC censorship and their circuit with the B-52s.

Did you collaborate with Chris Smith connected this documentary, oregon person immoderate accidental successful the last product?

Gerald Casale: I personally had none.

Mark Mothersbaugh: We fto him bash it, we kept arm’s length. That’s what a documentary is. Somebody putting unneurotic a communicative for you.

Bob Mothersbaugh: [deadpan] Yeah, helium gave america a database of answers that helium wanted america to read.

[Laughs.] Well, determination are immoderate documentaries wherever that’s not acold from the information — oregon astatine slightest docs wherever the taxable and their squad privation support connected the last cut.

Casale: He had truthful overmuch worldly that helium could person done a constricted TV bid alternatively than an hour-and-a-half movie.

There’s truthful overmuch vintage footage of you each successful this documentary. Were determination immoderate parts you had small to nary representation of?

Casale: Unfortunately, I retrieve a lot. It’s imaginable that what I did spot I hadn’t thought of successful a while.

M. Mothersbaugh: I don’t think, no. But you person to understand, Bob and I — General Boy [a quality who appeared successful galore Devo films and videos], who was our begetter — helium changeable from the clip we were babe infants. He changeable movie each mates of weeks, he’d sprout rolls of eight-millimeter, soundless movie backmost successful those days. It was conscionable small four-minute reels, truthful helium collected each that stuff. Bob and I person some seen similar 4 CD compilations of it. There is simply a batch of things that you go, “Everybody looked totally… look astatine the cars!” Stuff similar that.

But determination was immoderate absorbing footage that Bob and I some remember. General Boy was obsessed with driving from Akr...